


The Night Was Cold, but She Was Colder

by orphan_account



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Catharsis, Early in Canon, Gen, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-02 02:19:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15786942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Just a cathartic fic I wrote bc I really wanted to see Violet taking down Count Olaf.Rated M for graphic violence, but no sex or explicit content.





	The Night Was Cold, but She Was Colder

The evening was cloudless and a waxing gibbous moon shined overhead. In the heavens, the moonlight was complemented by the constellations above and a cool, crisp breeze blowing gently southwards. If you are reading this somewhere where you are safe and comfortable, such as your living room at home or the backroom of an unlisted tea and stationery store, you might imagine that this would be the perfect evening to take a stroll and contemplate one’s surroundings. However, the eldest Baudelaire was engaged in a far more grueling endeavor.

Violet panted laboriously as she neared the halfway mark of her ascent. She trusted her makeshift rope and grappling hook to hold steady, but she still feared heights. When she had still attended public school as a child, she and a boy had been at odds over whether or not their classroom motto could legitimately be attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. When Violet had shown historical documentation indicating the quote was indeed apocryphal, the unruly boy had a fit of rage and shoved her off the tallest point of the play structure. Despite her injuries in the incident, Violet was currently more concerned with failing her appointed mission, and by extension, her family.

“Hrnnngh,” she grunted as she surpassed what she guessed was the twenty foot mark. 

Despite never having rapelled before, Violet possessed tremendous upper body strength for her age (given her experience hefting gears, levers and engines for her various inventions) and thus had an aptitude for wall climbing.

“I’m coming for you, Sunny,” she thought doggedly. “There’s nothing that can break my promise to keep you and Klaus safe.”

Just as she thought this, she looked up towards the cage her sister was being hung from. Unless you are an inanimate object on display at the fashionable In Auction or a small parakeet with a deadly secret written on the scroll attached to its left leg, your reaction to being strung from a cage would probably be sheer terror. However, Sunny seemed to be taking her experience in stride.

“Purple!” she gurgled, calling her sister by her chosen nickname. “Achtuhalt!”

Violet quickly interpreted her sister’s infantile language. Apparently, there was danger ahead and she should stop ascending until signalled to continue. She almost questioned it until she heard a treacherous voice speaking about ten feet above and five feet to the left of her.

“The after-party will be at the Mexican place,” it rasped tinnily. 

She instantly recognized it as belonging to Count Olaf. After a momentary shudder of horror, she realized that he must have been transmitting through a radio, perhaps a walkie-talkie. The young inventor had used one herself on many an occasion to covertly access the mansion’s workshop late at night without alerting her parents.

“The one with the extra guacamole and steak quesadillas?” a second voice asked.

Without a doubt, it belonged to a male henchman, but Violet had not spent enough time among them to distinguish their identities on audible recognition alone.

“What kind of foolish question is that?!” the Count roared over the speakers. “There’s only one Mexican place in this town. Now tell me what you want so we can get the pre-order discount for actors.”

Violet held her breath as she signalled silently to her sister. She would have to make her way up the remaining length of rope one way or another, but the element of surprise would prove useful if she had to confront one of Olaf’s henchmen. Inch by inch, the Baudelaire wormed her way up the rope, a phrase which here means, “silently climbing her invention instead of pressing against the wall and creating a commotion like a certain Denouement triplet at four in the morning.” When she reached the windowsill, she dared a peek into the forbidden room. The hook-handed man was sulking in the corner, faced away his charge.

“Perhaps Olaf didn’t allow him his steak quesadilla,” she mused. “But I’ll serve a side order of kickass.”

With a grace and efficiency that would have shamed a professional gymnast, Violet raised herself to the flagpole upon which the cage was mounted and swung herself feet-first through the window. Coincidentally, the hook-handed man had just turned to face the window at this moment. He did not even have a second to cry out for help on his handheld radio before he was knocked out cold by the heels of the young Baudelaire impacting his solar plexus.

“Oof,” Violet groaned as she impacted the floor herself.

Sunny babbled and clapped in congratulation of her sister’s feat. This snapped Violet out of her adrenaline rush for the moment and reminded her of what needed to be done.

“Let’s get you out of there, Sunny,” she said. She observed that a simple manual winch would draw the cage in, and that the door to the cage had not even been locked.

“This is going to be easier than I thought,” she thought, simultaneously drawing in her grappling hook and her imprisoned sister. 

As soon as she unlatched the cage and freed Sunny from her bonds, it became evident that the youngest Baudelaire was in dire straits.

“Goodness, what happened to you?” Violet half-shouted. Her sister’s exposed body parts showed signs of sunburn, blunt force trauma and minor lacerations. Her formerly spotless dress had been torn at the hem and was dirtied by the dusty winds of the City.

“Nomuch,” Sunny shrugged.

Violet wanted to argue with her sister’s implication that such abuse had been ‘no big deal’, but she was overcome with anger.

“Look away Sunny,” she commanded. “I need to take care of our captor.”

Sunny silently obeyed as she sat on the floor. Violet grabbed onto the still-unconscious henchman’s torso and heaved him to the windowsill. She cantilevered him there until she could catch her breath.

“Nobody puts my sister in a cage,” she declared through gritted teeth. Moments later, the eldest Baudelaire lifted the heels of the awakening hook-handed man and used a combination of positional leverage and natural strength to send him to his death. She looked away, but both children in the tower room could not help hearing the screaming of the doomed man and the sickening crunch-thud of his demise.

Just as Violet was about to effect her escape, a voice crackled over the walkie-talkie on the floor.

“Hooky, I’m sorry about blowing up at you earlier about the Mexican place,” Olaf said apologetically. “I’m coming up the tower with a double order of enchiladas. How about we split them?”

Violet paled. She was not in a position to explain why one of Olaf’s most beloved henchmen was lying dead under suspicious circumstances when he reached the tower. The only options were to tell the truth, which would almost certainly result in her immediate and vicious demise, bluff a lie, which would also earn the maniacal actor’s wrath, or improvise.

Improvisation.

That seemed like a course of action the Count himself took often. “Time to give him a taste of his own medicine,” Violet thought grimly.

The heavy footsteps in the spiral stairwell grew louder and closer. Sunny remained on a low bookshelf out of sight, while Violet hid in a blind spot behind the door. 

“How’s the biting brat, Hooky?” the villain called out from behind the solid oaken door.

“Everything’s fine,” Violet replied unconvincingly. “It’s as boring as ever, boss.”

Olaf turned the doorknob and advanced. “That doesn’t sound like you,” he noted. “Are you sure you’re --”

The villainous actor had no time finish his sentence, as Violet had savagely slammed the door into the Count’s face and hand. Bones crunched as the unyielding vertex of the door crashed into Olaf’s bony frame.

“Damned orphan!” he yelped. He kicked the door aside and rushed into the room.

Violet crouched behind a study desk and quietly studied her surroundings. The only object of appreciable size within arm’s length was a large mackerel in a display case whose glass had cracked after it fell, presumably when she and the hook-handed man fell on the floor. She tied her hair in her ribbon and wielded the fish with both hands near the tail. Without warning, the Baudelaire leapt upon scheming Count and struck his torso with the fish.

To the amazement of both fighters, the mackerel’s flesh fell away and revealed a full-length traditional katana in place of the spinal column. 

“This is for Klaus, you bastard!” she screamed. With a firm grip on her newfound sword, she struck mercilessly into the Count’s right cheek. However, her inexperience with swordplay meant that what should have been a decapitation was reduced to merely a gaping wound on her opponent’s face.

“You can’t even begin to know what I’m capable of, orphan,” Count Olaf wheezed raggedly. “I would like to say this isn’t personal, but it entirely is.”

He circled around Violet and threw two steak knives at her shoulders. The Baudelaire ducked just in time, and the blades harmlessly lodged themselves in a bookcase.

“That’s the difference between you and me,” Violet said cooly. “I don’t miss twice.”

With the same precision she poured into each of her inventions, Violet delivered a quick upward thrust to her guardian’s abdomen, puncturing his heart nearly instantly. His staggered backward momentum brought him to the window, where he lost consciousness and fell to the same fate as his associate.

“Sic semper tyrannis,” the eldest Baudelaire mumbled.


End file.
